


Storyteller

by Deifire



Series: Eerie Advent Calendar Challenge [22]
Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 07:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5487989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Grandma Teller?...Is this my Uncle Marshall?"</em>
</p><p>In which some old photographs are rediscovered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Storyteller

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Eerie Advent Calendar fic challenge.
> 
> Prompt: Ghost of Christmas Past.

_Eerie, Indiana_  
_The near future_  
_December 23rd_

“Grandma Teller?”

Marilyn looks up from her book. Her grandson, Mars—that’s what his mother calls him, and as far as Marilyn knows, he’s never once gone by his full given name except on official records—is standing in front of her, holding one of their old photo albums.

“Yes, honey?” she asks.

“Is this my Uncle Marshall? The one that I’m named after?”

Marilyn gives the briefest of glances down at the page of old photos he’s showing her. Enough to confirm that, yes, they’re of the original Marshall Teller, the uncle Syndi's son has never met, taken some Christmas years ago.

“Mmm-hmmm,” she says. “Back when he was a teenager.”

“Who’s that?” Mars asks.

“That’s your Uncle Sim—“ she starts to say automatically, before she realizes, no, that’s not who’s sitting next to Marshall in the photo her grandson is pointing at.

“That’s Dash,” she says, surprised, before wondering if she should. She’s not sure how much the youngest kids even know about Dash, given that was a name you couldn’t speak aloud around Syndi for the longest time.

“There are things you don’t know, Mom,” was all Syndi would say when confronted. “Things you don’t want to know.” And Marilyn had conceded the point. She’d ignored the truth for years, according to Marshall before he’d disappeared, so why should she go searching for it now after someone she trusted assured her it was only going to hurt her?

But her grandson just says, “Oh,” in a matter-of-fact tone, before handing her the photo album and climbing up on the sofa to curl up beside her.

“I think they were fifteen, maybe sixteen years old here,” she says, which probably sounds very old to Mars, but impossibly young to Marilyn. It’s one of the few photos they have of Marshall and Dash at that age. Or at any age, really. Dash was infamous for finding ways to be absent when the cameras came out, she remembers. Or for “accidentally” wandering out of the frame or hiding his face at the last minute.

Here, though, the boys are sitting on the Tellers’ stairs, deep in conversation, paying no attention to whoever is holding the camera. They’re drinking cans of soda. Dash is gesturing with his, the strange mark on his back of his hand clearly visible. (And why hadn’t she wondered more about those marks? “He told me he was starting a trend,” she pictures herself saying to some unknown future interrogator. “All I thought to wonder about was how his parents had let him get tattoos, and if it had hurt to have them done there.”) Marshall is leaning back slightly against the upper step, and seems to be amused at whatever Dash is saying. His hair is as long as it had ever been, and it’s fallen partially into his face. She reaches toward the photo to brush it out of his eyes before she catches herself. 

They both look clearly smitten with each other, though Marilyn can’t for the life of her remember whether or not they were officially a couple when this was taken.

 _If I had it to do over again, would I have ever let you into my house?_ she thinks furiously at the grey-haired young man in the photo, and indulges for a second in imagining the path history might have taken if she’d only had the foresight to slam the door in his face when he first started coming around. But she knows that’s not fair, and furthermore, that she would still welcome him even knowing what she knows now. Somewhere along the way she became a mother to Dash, too, and today he’s just one more of her missing children.

“This must have been at our Christmas party that year,” is all she says aloud.

There are other pictures of Marshall on the page. There’s one of him and Simon, posing for the camera and giving each other bunny ears behind each other’s backs. This was just before Simon’s growth spurt, back when Marshall was still much taller, and Simon is having to reach a bit to get two fingers up behind Marshall’s head.

There’s one of Marshall opening a gift from his own grandmother, a lime green handmade sweater, and trying very hard to look both happy and grateful. There’s another of him opening a new EMF detector—a gift from her and Edgar that year, despite Edgar’s initial and repeated objections—with a look of happy gratitude that’s much less forced.

She describes each of these to Mars in turn, until she realizes he’s getting bored. The day-to-day life of a teenager is only so interesting to someone much younger. She flips backward in the album until she finds some pictures of Uncle Marshall closer to Mars’ own age. There’s seven-year-old Marshall leaving milk and cookies for Santa. Frosted sugar cookies in UFO shapes. Marilyn smiles. She’d forgotten that Marshall’s obsession with all things extraterrestrial had started so young. 

There’s another of him posing with Syndi in front of the tree. Young Mars is amused at this one, especially by his uncle’s Scooby Doo pajamas and his mother’s carefully teased 1980s bangs. He’s even more amused when a flip of the page reveals the posed scene has devolved into some sort of sibling argument. In the next shot, Syndi has Marshall in a headlock and Marshall is trying unsuccessfully to escape by biting his sister’s arm.

Marilyn shakes her head. She really should get these digitized, like she’s been promising herself for years now. It’s something Marshall would have nagged her about, until finally giving up and doing it himself. Marshall, who was always so concerned about preserving evidence.

Marshall, who is no longer with them.

 _Where are you?_ she thinks as she runs a hand over a picture of her young son unwrapping a giant toy robot. _Are you still out there somewhere? Do you think of us? Do you remember that we love you? Are you ever coming home?_

She wonders sometimes if knowing, even if it confirmed her very worst fears, would be better than this.

She hugs her grandson tight. “Do you want to hear a story about your Uncle Marshall?”

Young Mars perks up. “Can you tell the one about the Foreverware party?” he asks.

Marilyn blinks. She wasn’t expecting this specific request. 

“Oh, you’ve heard of that one?” she says. “Let’s see.” She thinks back. She’s not sure how much of Marshall’s version according to the journal he’d left behind matches her own memories of that event, and she’s grown even less sure over the years of which she should actually believe, but she figures that, save some careful edits to avoid giving her grandson nightmares, she owes it to Marshall to get his story as right as she can. 

“Once upon a time, back when we first moved to Eerie… “ she begins.


End file.
